There are many, many challenges to making a biopic about a musician, especially one like Bob Dylan. First, you have to find a person who can play that musician in a way that doesn’t feel like an impression, and second, you have to find people to put around that person who can hold their own. In James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, they pull it off. Not only does Timothée Chalamet do a really good Bob Dylan, but Monica Barbaro and Elle Fanning are incredibly compelling as the two points of the Bob Dylan love triangle.
Monica’s part is especially tricky, because she’s playing yet another real-life person, Joan Baez. The folk musician was partially responsible for introducing Bob to the public but then has to watch as his fame eclipses hers. So not only are the emotional beats tough, but Monica is doing her own singing and guitar playing in the movie. She spoke to Cosmopolitan about all the training that required, what it’s been like to get to know Timothée better on this press tour, and whether she’d like to speak to Joan again after wrapping the film.
You mentioned in another interview that you were initially nervous about the singing and the guitar in this film. How long did you have to learn both?
Initially, I had five months. We were supposed to start filming September of 2023, and then the strikes happened, and so we had to put pencils down, stop and not train with our coaches. But I had the time to continue working on the music alone. I met Riley Keough at an event and we talked about learning guitar and singing for roles. She was like, “Actually, around five months was when I felt like I started to have a proficiency.” And so throughout my process, I kept thinking of her and being like, Okay, in five months, I’ll feel a little better about this. And I think that was true for me too.
What skill of the two, refining the singing or the guitar, did you think was harder to learn?
To me, it was a bigger emotional challenge to sing, because I feel like it’s very intimate thing to do. But guitar was so challenging because the articulation of my fingers. I had some sense of my voice on my own, but playing guitar is so technical and so that really intimidated me, and the pace I had to play songs early on was just so excruciatingly slow to get the finger picking coordination. At the end of the day, what I was most worried about was having Joan’s voice in this feel appropriately representative of her voice.
You’re wearing fake teeth in this movie. I know when you get braces off and get retainers you have a lisp for sometimes months. Does the same thing happen with fake teeth? Does it make it hard to sing?
It didn’t make it any harder to sing than it made it hard to speak, if that makes sense. The S’s were a little funky, but otherwise, it was okay and it didn’t change the singing so much. I worked on getting them as as early as possible so that I could train. And I wore them around my house and did vocal exercises so that I wouldn’t have a lisp. The artist who made those teeth, Art Sakamoto, is the best in the world at what he does. He made the teeth for Charlize Theron in Monster, for Will Smith in King Richard. He’s the guy, and he’s brilliant.
I was reading in Timothée’s Rolling Stone cover story that you both tried to keep distance on set and not get too friendly because it matches how your characters would have felt about each other. How has it been getting to know each other now without that wall up?
He’s just starting with us because he’s been filming, but we are having these beautiful moments of chatting and catching up. In this stretch where he’s been working, I’ve been doing a lot of press with Elle, and we sort of laugh about how we don’t have any scenes together. We share one look, and she’s so brilliant. I’m so glad I’ve gotten hang out with her in this space. Everyone’s wonderful. This was a more or less siloed one for us in our training, as opposed to something like Top Gun: Maverick, where we were in planes together, trauma-bonding together with all of our fears and excitement and all the risks we were taking. But this was really cool too, because we could just show up and do our jobs and be these proficient musicians who wouldn’t have met until they were in a performance space.
You and Elle are two points in this love triangle. What conversations did you have about what you each wanted to represent?
We did have a table read, and she had a very comprehensive understanding of who Suze was in Bob’s life, as I did with who Joan was in his life. And we got to just play our understandings of those people against and with Timothée’s exceptional portrayal of Bob and his understanding of Bob and how he showed up in his relationships. I think everyone just really trusted their own training and their own understanding of the person they were representing, and then we could just sort of show up and be present with the words on the page and trust James to take on the responsibility of editing all of those pieces together.
There is a scene where it’s implied that Joan is responsible for having taught Bob how to make coffee. In your real life, have you ever had to teach a romantic partner a you-should-know-this-already skill?
Oh, god, yeah. Wasn’t it Dua Lipa that said, like, “I’m done teaching boys”? I do feel like Joan had this maternal instinct and especially with Bob. Joan has written about that. I don’t know, I’m gonna think of something later that’s really funny. I’ve actually been taught a lot of things. I’ve been taught how to use a drill and find studs in a wall.
It’s a two-way street!
Yeah. If you’re lucky, it’s a two-way street. [Laughs]
I know you did get to speak to Joan before you filmed. I’m curious if you’ve spoken her since or if you would want to.
We texted a little bit after. We talked about some cuff links that she had given Bob. And I talked with Arianne Phillips, our costume designer, about that. We were trying to figure out what the specific cuff links were that she gave him. And she drew a couple of images of things she wore right after our conversation on the phone. But since then, we haven’t spoken.
I think I owe her a letter of of gratitude, because I really do just appreciate her for so much more than just the opportunity to play her, but just for all of who she is. I have so much admiration for her. If there’s any outreach in any capacity, it would just be for that. Once the movie has run its course, it would be lovely to sit and talk to her about other things.
